I was feeling pretty grumpy this past week and doing my best to embrace Thanksgiving. I wasn't ready for Christmas yet.
And then I arrived in Vegas, legs stiff from a four-hour drive, already weary from the holiday festivities that had not yet come, and swung by the Bellagio to see what they'd done at the Conservatory this season.
I caught one glimpse of it and started exhaling the words "Ohhh myyy Godddd" without thinking about who could hear me (or who might reply).
"'Twas – A Visit From St. Nick" opened November 15 and runs through January 3. I can't say it felt particular new or even that unusual (unlike some of what I've seen in the past at the Conservatory)—but it was just what I needed. It was just perfect. 
There's a 42-foot-tall Christmas tree (a real one from Mount Shasta!) with a miniature train (the "Peppermint Express") running beneath it, towering above an 18-foot gingerbread house (where scents of cinnamon, ginger, and clove are pumped in through the vents).
A pair of oversized reindeer stand at attention...
...ready to jingle their bells and lift their feet off the ground...
...and pull their gigantic, red and gold sleigh (though maybbe not before Santa gets there).
The central walkway is always the most popular photo spot of the Conservatory—and this year, it goes right through the belly of the sled.
Above it stretches a 40-foot-long branch, bearing pinecones and red berries—the same type of natural materials that have characterized the Conservatory displays for over 25 years.
In anticipation of Christmas-a-coming, the 14,000-square-foot, glassed-in space is filled with larger-than-life ball ornaments, nestled in beds of red and white poinsettias.
And a 27-foot-tall Bellagio Bear named Drum Major Dolly (yes, it's a girl) plays the music of the season upon her snare drum.
She's so cute dressed as a wooden toy soldier, with her fancy chain fastenings for her red-jeweled buttons.
Across the way, a giant velvet stocking is brimming with toys...
...as a not-so-small elf rides a wooden rocking horse...
...in front of a hearth where stockings have been hung with care (a nod to the poem that the display is based on, "A Visit from St. Nick" by Clement Clarke Moore, a.k.a. "'Twas the Night Before Christmas").
The crystal chandeliers, hanging from the 50-foot glass ceiling above, are dwarfed by all the enormity.
The one thing that seems somewhat normal-sized is the working carousel...
...whose carved wooden horses might actually be a bit small for the average adult rider.
After all, the Bellagio Conservatory isn't just for kids—and most times, it seems to appeal mostly to adults anyway.
But as we approach December, they've done a good job of sparking the feeling of childlike wonder in an old curmudgeon like me.
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